I heard this story the other day. “There once was this small software company that created this revolutionary piece of software that some people called a ‘spreadsheet’. They didn’t invite ‘spreadsheets’ but they did something much more interesting, they made it popular so eventually almost everyone used them. They then made enough money to buy another small software company which allowed people to do ‘email’. On a roll they even found the time to invent a new type of software application called ‘groupware’, not everyone understood what it was those who did thought it was very ‘cool’. Meanwhile on the other side of town a very big hardware company was talking to another small software company about something called a ‘GUI’ that used ‘icons’ and ‘menus’. This was nothing new as yet someone else had allegedly invented the ‘GUI’ but because it was named after a raincoat it only proved popular with creative types in the ‘meeja’. Eventually the big hardware company and the other small software had a falling out and decided to develop their own ‘GUIs’. To cut a very long and very dull story short the small software company became a big software company and the big hardware company somehow managed to destroy its own software business. History records that our original small software company whilst still ostensively known for the ‘spreadsheet’ had actually became famous for ‘groupware’ and ‘email’ and was the market leader in both. It employees were well motivated and actually like working there. Things weren’t going well for our large hardware company and with margins akin to those found in a child’s exercise book they posted, until WorldCom and Enron, the largest corporate loss in history. A new boss decided that it was time to offer ‘services’ and ‘consulting’ as well as ‘hardware’ and also could try their hand at ‘software’ again but this time buy some companies who were already quiet good at it. As luck would have it, for the big hardware company anyway, the small software company looked like an ideal candidate. It was doing well competing against the now large software company who suddenly looked like dominating the ‘software’ market. The small software company didn’t seem to make a lot of money so would be cheap and give the large hardware company the opportunity to not only to have a credible ‘software brand’ but also have a go at the people who they had the falling out with over the ‘GUI’, who ironically where the very same people the small software company competed with. The deal went ahead and the big hardware company, now a big services company as well, purchased the small software company and things worked well for a while, the small software company competed very successfully against the large software company but alas they still didn’t make a lot of money and often lost some. So as big companies do they decided to totally absorb the small software company and make everyone drive cheap cars from General Motors, after all they’d done this to the other small software companies they had acquired so why should this one be any different? That wasn’t the end of it though. They now started to believe they understood software better than the people from the small software companies they had purchased and decided that everyone in the whole world wanted a ‘portal’ based on some technology that had been gathering dust on a developers hard drive for a couple of years. So rather than develop the cool ‘groupware’ stuff customers loved they threw it away for something name used to make cappuccinos, even trying to mimic the small software’s companies products. None of them worked very well or could do half the things that ‘groupware’ was capable of. So the big hardware, services and software company ended up with just a brand but as someone pointed out by removing the people and the technology it’s probably worthless anyway.” Could never happen in reality could it? No one would be that daft.